Saving Ketchup: The Race to Breed a Tomato for a Warming World

Bold Names

The Wall Street Journal

Technology

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 7 June 2024

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What good is a future without ketchup or pasta sauce? These are just two potential casualties of a changing climate, as tomato growers face shrinking harvests due to hotter and drier weather. WSJ reporter Patrick Thomas takes us behind the scenes of how seed breeders are trying to make a tomato that can thrive with less water, and how that highlights the efforts going into protecting crops against the effects of climate change. Sign up for the WSJ's free The Future of Everything newsletter. What do you think about the show? Let us know on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or email us: [email protected] Further reading: The Race to Save Ketchup: Building a Tomato for a Hotter World How to Eat Your Way to a Greener Planet Sustainable Agriculture Gets a Push From Big Corporations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:14.4	slash Wall Street.
0:18.6	Summers here. The season of pool parties, beach days, and cookouts.
0:24.0	And for a lot of people, myself included, there's a certain condiment that hot dogs and
0:29.3	hamburgers just aren't complete without.
0:31.6	Catchop. Uh-huh. Hot dog clean. No much you don't complete without. Ketchup.
0:33.0	Hot dark clean.
0:34.0	What much you don't add or what?
0:35.0	No thanks.
0:36.0	I got it covered.
0:38.0	Ketchup is more than just a delicious addition to a backyard bite.
0:42.0	It's big money.
0:43.4	According to Statista, global revenue for tomato ketchup
0:49.0	amounts to almost 37.7 billion dollars.
0:52.0	But the changing climate is contributing to making major
0:56.0	tomato growing regions hotter and drier. And that could have serious
1:00.4	implications for lots of crops, including the tomato going into your ketchup and pasta sauce.
1:05.6	The tomato industry is one example of how some of these produce crops could be under threat from a changing climate.
1:12.6	W.S.J. reporter, Patrick Thomas, covers the business of agriculture.
1:16.6	We've seen a steady decline over the years, which certain producers, certain seed companies
	...

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